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Rye People: David Gottesman

Island Drive resident David Gottesman made a bet on the "Oracle of Omaha" long before many others and it has paid off handsomely. The 80 year old avid swimmer was an early investor in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and this has landed him as number 117 on the Forbes 400 list with a reported net worth of $2.5 billion, according to Forbes.

In 2003 Gottesman joined the board of directors of Bershire Hathaway and continues this service today. In Berkshire's 2003 annual report, Warren Buffett said:

"Last year, as we moved to change our board, I asked for self-nominations from shareholders who believed they had the requisite qualities to be a Berkshire director. Despite the lack of either liability insurance or meaningful compensation, we received more than twenty applications. Most were good, coming from owner-oriented individuals having family holdings of Berkshire worth well over $1 million. After considering them, Charlie and I – with the concurrence of our incumbent directors – asked four shareholders who did not nominate themselves to join the board: David Gottesman, Charlotte Guyman, Don Keough and Tom Murphy. These four people are all friends of mine, and I know their strengths well. They bring an extraordinary amount of business talent to Berkshire’s board."

Gottesman is also a principal at the investment advisory firm First Manhattan that he founded in 1964 and sits on the board of the American Museum of Natural History.